


Smoke in the Sky

by wonderfulmax90



Series: The Hope Series [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:20:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22227022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderfulmax90/pseuds/wonderfulmax90
Summary: Noah Hudson is a normal-ish person, a journalist with a dark secret. He hunted monsters. Monsters that had been hunted to near extinction thanks to him. But now, they are coming back with a vengeance, all at the hands of one man, the devil. Unbeknownst to him, Noah makes a deal with the devil himself. With the help of his brothers and a few angels-and spanning over three different viewpoints-Noah finds out that sometimes…making a deal with the devil can be good.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: The Hope Series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608190





	1. Prologue: James Abbot

I was the first one who had been arrested that fateful day. The first one who has been given any knowledge of the charges brought against us. The first one to see what had happened to everyone around us. It was the first time I had realized that I was not going to get out of this as easily as the other times. It was the first time I had realized the I was going to end up in jail for what I had done.  
My body ached from not being able to move my body much for the past few hours. It was probably one of the only gripes I had against the people who held me captive. I was the one who had intentionally been in my seat this entire time. I made no intent to escape. I had made no move to ever even make a plan to escape. But my hands were still in chains and my ankles held together by cool, uncomfortable metal.  
My lawyer sat to my right. He had not spoken a word to me since the day David, Noah and I had all met him. He sat next to me in these interviews but rarely ever interjected. He was the man who had more of the money side of being a lawyer then the side that helped people. But I would rather know that he had some interest in us. Winning this case would mean winning the case of the century. If he lost this case, he would go down in history as the man who let the Abbots go to jail. He would be that man. The man who let the last of the hunters go to the judicial system. He would only cause an uprising if he lost the case. He had known this since we met him. He was the person I wished I had a chance to beat up if I were allowed to.  
“Let’s start with the first time you met Noah,” An agent leaned forward and put on a fake smile. He was just as ready to leave at this point. I felt the same pain that he was feeling at the moment.  
“He was just a little kid when I met him. He was so small…”  
“You relayed that he was around five or six at the time you met him.”  
“Yeah,” I nodded in agreement to my words. “He was in first grade but he looked like he was a toddler. He was so malnourished.”  
“And he was willing to give up his house for a few days while you brought out the ghost? The ghost he claimed to have seen in his house?”  
“He didn’t claim that there was a ghost in the house. He was a child. An abused child and he just needed a friend. A friend came in the form of the ghost of a teenager who had been killed on the property by his own abusive father.”  
“Mr. Abbot, why did you take on this case? With the hundreds of cases that hunters take up, you took up this case.”  
“It involved a child. We at first thought that Noah was going to be hurt in the process of being near this ghost but…we felt really bad for ridding Noah of the only friend that he had. He was just a normal human being with some horrible circumstances. I wished that he hadn’t been hurt like that but when we did get the ghost out of his house.”  
“That’s when you started going back to help him?”  
“Yes, that’s when we started bringing groceries and money to Noah and his sister whenever we passed through town.”  
“And they were some of the only people who you kept coming back to see how they are doing, isn’t that correct?”  
“Yes sir,” My lawyer shifted in his seat as he looked me over. “We wanted to make sure they at least had food every once in awhile. His sister had to work two jobs to even keep them afloat. Their mom was a drug addict and physically abused the older sister. Noah was abused by his father who was barely around because he couldn’t handle being around his wife anymore. We had to make sure Noah was okay.”  
“And you didn’t report them to CPS?”  
“Every time I called to report they were ‘too busy’ to take the case. I called every day for three years trying to get them to take the case. No one did.”  
“So you took it upon yourself to the care of him. A noble cause.”  
“I guess you could say that he is more like family to you, right?”  
Tears filled my eyes as I looked down at my hands. Family. I had always considered Noah family. He is the only person who I considered family that wasn’t blood to me. My uncles who had helped raised me-while not blood-felt like they were blood and I considered them to be blood anyhow. Noah was the only person who I never really considered blood family but family nonetheless. I pushed back off of the table and looked a my lawyer.  
“Can I take a break please?”  
“Yeah, we all deserve to have a bit of lunch,” One of the agents smiled at me as I moved  
My lawyer and the agents all nodded. I felt the tears on my cheeks clearly. It wasn’t the most embarrassing thing I had done while in prison but it was high up there. I moved up to the door and waited for the the guards to open the door. Our lawyer pounded on the door a few times and waited for the both of us to be let out. The agents waited behind the both of us. A few minutes later, the door shuttered open and a guard stood in front of me.  
The burly guard yanked me by my handcuffs and towards my cell. He spoke no words to me as the guards and my lawyer walked out to freedom. All I could assume was that they were headed off to talk to each other over some cheap fast food place down the street. That sounded fancy now that I had a taste of prison food. But some people said that prison food was more nutritious than school food. I had no idea who spread that rumor but then again, I didn’t have a lot of experience with school food.  
The guard pushed me into the cell. The bright lights of the hallway were no longer as bright as he shoved me into the much simmer cell room. A mass murderer on my right and someone in for tax evasion on my left. It was no federal prison but it was one step down from that. A high security, maximum security prison. It was quite obvious that I was the odd one out. That I was the one who was ‘too tough’ for the prison that I was in.  
David and Noah were somewhere in here but I heard rumors that they were considering separating us more. Even though I knew that we were as far apart as possible. Besides the heavily coded letters we had sent back and forth between each other there had been nothing we had done to have shown our hands. No one else-well no one besides the guard we had enlisted to help had-known that we had been communicating. Not even our lawyer knew that we had been communicating. All three of us had been careful of that. Not letting people know that we were communicating in case we were to be separated. But that was seemingly what happened to the three of us.  
I closed my eyes and waited for a few moments. I waited for someone to answer though I was waiting for someone who might not even show up. The air grew colder, pricking up around me. My whole body ached for a moment as the cold air around me made my limbs go numb. It was as if my whole body had been dunked into snow. When I reopened my eyes, a grey mist surrounded me. A dark figure slinked towards me. The soul of the man was still as dark as the day I had met him. But a slight silver shine had become more evident as he walked towards me. He was becoming a nurturing soul but not to me but to someone else.  
“Do you know where Gabriel is,” I spoke towards the shadow figure but the figure moved like a broken VHS tape and glitched for a moment before becoming more solid.  
The figure shook its head as it continued its slow walk towards me. He stopped a few feet away from me. It was a lot closer than what I had thought. Normally he would stop as far away from me as possible. But the dark figure solidified right in front of me. For the first time in awhile, I saw the face of the figure I had been communicating with over the past few months.  
His blonde, wavy hair was pulled back into a low bun. One of his pupils was red with a matching yellow iris. The other eye remained as blue as the day I had met him. A set of three wings sat on his back, half of his wings already covered in burns. His body was covered in burns but it didn’t distract from his Greek God like features. He wore one of Noah’s old band t-shirts, the name of the band too faded to see who had once graced it. His jeans were burnt up to the knee. The halo that once hovered over his head was broken. One half had already attached itself to his head and solidified into a horn. Halfway done with being turned from angel to demon.  
“No. I don’t. If I did then I would have come to you,” Xavier’s voice had dropped a few octaves from the deep baritone I had once known. “Is that why you summoned me?”  
I nodded, realizing how stupid it was to call a fallen angel into my cell for a stupid question I already knew the answer to. Xavier hovered around me for a moment before locking eyes with me once more. His whole body had even got taller from the last time I had seen him. Demons had always sat a little bit taller than us humans in general. But that was an understatement considering how tall Noah and Lucifer got when they were angry. Then again, they weren’t normal demons.  
Xavier paced around me, checking his nails throughly as if he was already bored with the conversation. With a nonchalant flick of his wrist, my voice was snatched from my throat for a minute. Not like I would’ve wanted to speak in front of the angel. My throat was snatched of any air that I had been breathing. Xavier didn’t let go until my lungs burned and my face had surely turned blue.  
“Yeah, I needed to see if there was any word from Gabriel since…since he saved us.”  
Xavier let out a soft chuckle as he wrapped a burnt hand around my throat. Even if he couldn’t feel the fires that raged from where he came from, my soul could feel it. His hand wasn’t just warm to the touch, it was hot. Hotter than any fire that burned on earth. My skin melted like plastic underneath his grip as he raised me up into the air with strength that would have easily outed him as not human if it were not for where we were.  
“If I knew he was back I would have told you. Kind of hard for me to sneak back and forth considering how I look right now.”  
Regret dripped from his words. He was not even ready to fall when Faukes asked him to. Being one of Noah’s guardian angels, he really had no choice but to fall from heaven to help out the person he was protecting. Other angels hated him for it. But others had understood. Though I wouldn’t believe Faukes’ words. He tended to be hopefully optimistic about these kinds of things.  
I pushed myself off of Xavier and dropped to the ground, gasping for air. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”  
“As you should be. It’s your fault I look like this.”  
I had no time to argue that point. He was the one who I had first met other than Noah when we were working the case. But that was a long time ago. Before he began to resent me for decisions he had made. A time before I ended up seeing what I had inside of his soul. He was no less the monster that I had once thought he was.  
“Any word on Noah and Sam?”  
“Being transferred to different prisons. They don’t want you guys talking to each other. They say it would be bad if you all decided to stop talking. You need to be careful with whatever you tell the government. It could ruin us all.”  
I nodded in some agreement.  
“I think it’s time for you to go.”  
Xavier touched my heart and pushed on my chest. The man faded back into the black of his soul. The silver was only a bit brighter than when I first saw him today.  
A guard stood at the bars in front of me. His eyes went over my body. He pointed to my neck. The mirror behind him confirmed what he was pointing at. A burn in the shape of a hand was wrapped around my neck. My own hand reached up to touch it but I shook off the idea as I turned back to look at the man.  
“Your lunch break is over,” I looked down at the untouched food on the floor of my cell. “You got to get back to the interview room.”  
Another nod. I was chained back up and brought back to the room. Room number six. Same room as always. But this time, the room was much more silent than what I had expected. My lawyer stood and placed a hand on my shoulder.  
“My client is going on trial in an hour. I do believe that means you have to stop interviewing him.”  
“I thought the trial wasn’t for another few weeks,” I sputtered and looked at the agents who looked like they were just as confused as I was.  
“Charges just go dropped on the previous case. We got pushed up,” My lawyer turned us out of the room as a guard followed us out of the cells and towards a van. “I’ll see you there.”  
Noah and David sat in the van with me. David had a black eye and Noah was stone cold. His sunglasses had been given to him as soon as he got to the prison. Even his mugshot covered his eyes. Anyone who dared look into his eyes would end up seeing their worst hell. He didn’t even look at himself in the mirror anymore. His own powers having an affect on him.  
~  
I placed my hands on the wooden table. Media had already begun to storm the building. There was about fifty or so cameras inside and another hundred outside. People from all of the world had come to see the downfall of the infamous Abbot family. A once very powerful and respected family of hunters was forced underground and we had kept it up but…oh how the mighty have fallen.  
Noah, David and I had kept our bodies standing for as long as we could as we could. Noah seemed to be reading the room as best he could. He seemed to have been waiting for someone to come and attack him. His fingers tapped against the table in irritation. David wrapped his own hand around mine and waited for the judge to walk in. All three of us were under the watchful eyes of thousands-no, millions of people.  
“All rise,” Called the bailiff even though most of us were already standing. A judge walked in though the bailiff made no attempt to give us their name. I waited for a moment in an attempt to see if he would say the name but he said nothing.  
The judge rolled his eyes as he looked over at all three of us, “You may be seated.”  
Noah sat first. Then David. I was the last one standing. I finally sat down and looked up at the judge with as cold of eyes I could imagine. The judge looked over at the prosecution who stood.  
The next few days went on without much fun. Opening statements to the jury. All of the Abbots being made out to be terrible people who hunted people for sport. Our lawyer seemed to try and make us seem more sympathetic but I didn’t even buy his fake concern for all of us. He was not making the case for us to get out of a lot of prison time. He had warned us that we were not going to get out of going to prison but rather, that we would end up having the time we were in prison reduced if we were to testify about what we had seen and expose the community that had been driven underground for so many centuries.  
I was the first one to go on the stand. Being the oldest, I wanted to first. Noah had protested but our lawyer wanted to keep him on the back burner until he had solid use for the King of Hell. Though, I assumed that it would be some sort of finishing piece that would make the case for all of us.  
“When was the first time you saw Noah,” Our lawyer asked.  
“What do you mean? The first time or the time after I saw him after the break.”  
“After the break.”  
“The first time I had seen Noah begin to work on our first case back was like watching someone I barely knew,” I murmured to the agents in the room with me. Both watched me for a moment before I leaned forward. “I know you both believe me but I don’t think about one else will believe me.”  
“So, why tell us?”  
“Because I don’t want to feel like I’m crazy anymore. I want to know that I am…fine. It’s not this is the first time I’ve seen Noah work a case before.”  
“A hunting case?”  
“Yeah,” I moved in my seat. “But this time was the weirdest time I had seen him work a case. I know what he does. I know how he moves. I know who he is.”  
“So what was so weird about this time?”  
“Because he was the case.”


	2. Chapter One: Noah Hudson

Chapter One  
There was not one person left into the office building. I was the last person in the room. The sun had already begun to set in the distance. I grabbed my bag and shut down my computer. The room was beginning to become cold. An elevator dinged somewhere near me signaling the onslaught of cleaning crews that swept through the building once everyone had left. I was normally the only one who had been left by the time they came.   
I walked towards the dinging of the elevator and smiled at the janitor who walked passed me when I finally got to the elevator. The elevator opened for me and I walked in, pressing the button to go down to the front door. A short ride at best. The doors took more than a moment to close. Every time the doors did that, I began to think that the elevator would break down and that I would have to take the dreaded stairs back down to the first floor.  
The doors eventually came to a close and dropped me down first floor. The first floor was dark. No one waited at the reception desk for people who wanted to come into building. But there were some security guards who stayed overnight that protected the building. I lifted a hand up to one of the cameras and waved goodbye to anyone who might have been watching, assuming they were even watching at all.   
Few people were on the street that night which was odd for a suburb right outside of Los Angelos. Normally, there were cars flying past in hopes to get to get to some party that was happening in the Hills. But tonight was eerily quiet. No cars. No people. Not even the lone animal. I half expected the wind to be blowing but nothing. There was nothing.   
I walked to the only place I knew to go at this time of night. The corner store that was still open. A bell ringed as I opened and closed the door behind me.   
“Good evening Noah, how’s it hanging?” The owner leaned on the cashier’s desk and watched me walk around as I was the only one in the store.   
He was one of the few people who had seen me on a regular basis since I had moved here. I was more of an introvert that hated talking to people. He was the one who had at least tried to help me with getting out of the house and into the world. He was slightly older than me and he was only one who had tried to be my friend. I always felt a little off when he asked me out to go to parties and stuff like that. But I was the one who had been there regularly but I at least obliged once or twice.  
“Kind of okay, I guess.”   
“Just got off work,” I smiled as I turned back to look at the man. I walked in and slowly moved around until I got towards the flowers.   
“Yeah,” I touched the roses and picked up a dozen before heading back to the snacks, picking up a few of the sour gummy worms and some peanut butter cups. “Long day.”  
“Only when you make it, Noah.”   
“Pretty silent tonight, isn’t it?” I changed the subject to keep it away from work and the fact of the night and what I had wandered in here for. “No one’s on the streets.”  
Dean shrugged, “You’re really going to make this a weird thing. You have one over active imagination, son.”  
“Dean, you know that I would never want to do that but you know where we live. There is no way that this is supposed to be one of the busiest streets leading into LA and you’re supposed to tell me that this shit has no people, no cars, nothing?”  
Dean sputtered silent and just raised his hands in defeat. I placed my items on the counter and let out another chuckle. Dean was only an inch or two smaller than my six foot and a few inches frame that had only been stunted by my malnourishment as a kid but he was very adorable. He moved here from England a few years back and still held onto the thickest southeast Birmingham accent that I had ever heard in my life. He was also very happy to help me with trying to find out who my sister’s killer was.   
He picked up the roses and looked up at me. He knew what they were for and pushed them to the side without ringing them up, “Those are on the house.”  
“Let me pay for them, just this once Dean.”  
“I won’t let you. You know about the rule-”  
“You’ll keep paying for the flowers until I find their murderer. I know. But you don’t need to keep doing this. We both know I am no closer to finding who killed her and my only suspect is a doctor.”   
Dean gripped both of my hands and locked eyes with me, “But you can bring that doctor in, by continuing to do what you do. By exposing the truth.”   
I nodded and backed away from the man. He was retired but still ran the store out of fun but insisted I still try to find the man who had killed and mutilated our sisters. He rang up the rest of my food and allowed me to at least pay for that. I grabbed the roses and smiled at the man as I walked back out onto the street. The air wrapped around me, warming up my now cold hands. I paused and shoved the snacks into my backpack and carried the roses deeper into the suburbs. The cemetery was quite a walk away from my house but there was no way I wouldn’t stop there today.   
November 2nd. Three years ago to the day, my sister was found dead in a ditch. I was only fifteen at the time she was killed. But I was all alone in a state that didn’t care about me. I had been taking care of myself fully at that time so I had nothing tying me to the place I had come from. So, I packed up and moved to California as soon as I had heard the news. The police had asked me to identify her body but they didn’t expect a minor to stay in the city.  
As soon as I had heard what had happened, I was dead set on finding out who had murdered her. There was nothing that could have scared me. After six months, the police dropped the case and told me to head home but I had already enrolled in school so there was no reason for me to go back until the end of the school year. That was until the second murder. The murder of Dean’s sister. There had been similar murders after Dean’s sister’s but that was brushed off by the police.   
My sister had been murdered…and I was the last one to carry her name. I had met Dean only a few months after his sister had been murdered. We hadn’t been interviewed together and had no idea that the other really existed. It was a freak accident that we met at the convince store that he owned. But we had bonded over the past three years about what happened to our sisters. He would have to make the same trip to the cemetery as I was that night in a month or so.   
The cemetery was surprisingly still and very much open for how late it felt. It was nearing eight at night and it was still open. I moved into the cemetery, already knowing where to find my sister’s grave. It was near the back and lacked any show. I had barely enough money to get to LA in the first place. The last few hundred dollars I had went to securing a place for at least a month. I had to open emergency commissions for my writing to just even get a headstone for her.   
I placed a hand on the cool rock and moved my hand over the indentation of her name. The date written for her death was all that was under her name. We had no idea when she was born so just a year and month was there in place for her birthdate. Neither did I. My parents had us both at home and had never given us to the system. No one really knew how I existed and went to school. By the time my dad left us and my mom had died, my sister took one final act of kindness and tried to enter us into the system. Since we had no idea when we were born, we had to get some DNA testing done to even predict the month and year of our births.   
I lit up a cigarette, not for me, but for her and placed it on the headstone near the roses I had left for her. I pulled my snacks out of my book bag and sighed. The snacks always tasted different when I sat in the in the cemetery. They didn’t taste bad but they tasted better. I pulled out my own laptop and pulled up a word processor, beginning to type. For as long as the cigarette burned then I would write. Or try to write.   
Tonight brought less words then what I had thought would have happened. I didn’t think that I would only have a handful than the normal hundred or so that I was able to write out here. But the cigarette burned down and I had only written about fifty words. I moved closer to the headstone for a moment while I cleaned up my trash and laptop. The cigarette was the last piece of trash left. The only one that I left there for my sister. Even if she didn’t appear to me like the teen I had seen all those years ago as a child, I knew she was watching me live my life.   
The walk home was a lot longer than what I had hoped. I wished it was a lot shorter. But it was pretty calming to know the silence of LA was actual silence for once and not the fake LA silence that I was used to that was really just a bunch of cars whizzing past with some upper-middle class phonies trying to make it in Hollywood. But there was no one. A chill ran up my spin then back down. Only a block or two until I was back to my apartment building. The place I had been staying in ever since I was fifteen. The place that I called home.   
My keys jingled in my hand as I opened the front of the building. It was a three story house that had been renovated to hold three tenants. One on each floor with some storage space in the basement. The entrance to my house was in the front with one floor below me and one above me. Both had entrances on the side of the house. The door had a habit of becoming stuck and I had to ram my shoulder into the door to get inside.   
The door creaked as I let myself inside of the house. It seemed like the other people who had lived here-whom I had never met in the three years that I had lived here-had fallen asleep. I attempted to keep quiet as I moved through the house, dropping my bag to the ground and smiled. I was finally home and as much as I had hated it, I was here. I was home alone with nothing to occupy me. Given the circumstances of my childhood, I had no boyfriend to come home to and I had no homework to do.   
When I was a child, all I had was school and thus, threw myself into it to ignore the bad things that happened to me when I was small. By seventh grade, I was already halfway done with high school. By the end of high school, I had both my associates degree and my bachelors degree in both creative writing and psychology. It was fun but I had no idea what to do with either of them. But I had gone into a job that at least related to at least one of my fields of interest.   
But the book that I had been writing since I was fifteen had come to a screeching had. All of it had seemed to come crashing and burning to the ground that I had once thought. It needed a complete overhaul and I didn’t know where I was going to go from here. From the point I had started from. It was gross and I hated every part of the concept but I had become too attached to it.   
I walked around to one of the windows and climbed up the fire escape and to the roof. From here I had a pretty good view of the neighborhood around me and the city ahead of me. The idea was that I found a house where I could see out into the city with. It made me feel like I was so close to the place I had always wanted to be in. Granted, not today.   
The roof was my only happy place in this hellhole. It was the only place that I could even think of that hadn’t been tainted by my sister’s murder or my own trauma. I pulled my knees close to my chest for a moment. The place where I sat was happy and warm. I was glad that I was in a place where I didn’t have to care about wearing a jacket. I stood and walked over to the edge of the roof and and reached over to the fire escape on the much taller apartment building next to me and moved up to the top of that building. I sat down on that roof and waited for myself to do what I had planned. A slight sweat had already broken out on my face and body as I moved towards the edge of the roof.   
There was really nothing left for me. Three years of trying to get my sister’s murderer in jail seemed to all be for nothing. There was no way I could take down a celebrity doctor who could easily just pay me off. There was not much I could do. He would be accused and there was no evidence that I had that I had that could put him in jail. I would never be able to end up recovering as a journalist if I made a ‘baseless’ accusation. There had been no way for me to even take down the man who had been the reason I had no family left.   
All I wanted to do was to end up in a place where I was finally happy. Nothing I did had ever seemed to satisfy me. Every little thing burned into my soul. I hurt so bad and there was just numbness. I had never self-harmed before. Not in the traditional sense of having scars covering my arms and legs. Not in the ‘owo I’m so broken, I have crackhead energy’ sense either. I just…didn’t care if I lived or died anymore. Days would go where I didn’t eat and I was okay with that because I never felt hunger before. I would keep to the alleyways in hopes some homeless person would rob and kill me. With no one to look after me…I feel off. I lost my whole life to being away from home and being uprooted from the place I had lived most of my life to solve a murder that I had never really wanted to even solve.   
The skyline that had held once so much hope to me. One that had meant that I had made it. But now it had been tainted blood red. A place my sister had known meant so much to me had now been covered with her murder. Even if she hadn’t meant to be murdered out here, I resented her for ruining the dream that I had in LA. I placed my head down and looked down at the street below me. I walked to the edge of the roof and waited to get up enough courage to jump.   
“You okay up here?”  
The male voice echoed across the empty street. I almost dropped off the roof right then and there. I turned on my heel, grabbing the knife I kept on my waist off and whipped towards the sound. My knife nicked the man’s neck and his hand wrapped around the wrist that wasn’t holding the knife. The split second was the fastest that I had ever done something like this.   
“Fucking hell,” The man pulled me up to meet him, our nose barely grazing each others. “I am so sorry for scaring you.”  
“Shut the fuck up,” I pressed the knife against the man’s neck, almost slicing off a chunk of his blonde hair. “What the fuck are you doing up here?”  
The man gave no response and only opened his mouth when I pressed the knife against his neck, drawing blood, “Just wanted to relax. I live right above you.” “Never met you before. How do you know where I live?”  
“Because I never sleep. I see you when you come home but you never really talk a lot to your neighbors. I normally come up here since you’ve taken the roof but it seems you’ve claimed this roof for yourself too.”  
I continued to look at the man who was with me. He gave nothing else away. Just the fact that we lived in the same house for who knows how long. But that was the only part of the story. The man slowly walked me to the middle of the roof, my knife dropping to my side but still in my hand. I shifted the knife in my hand slowly before I moved away from him.   
“But since you’re here…,” My grip on the knife tightened, raising it up in front of my face once more. He smiled lightly as he turned around and dug around in the dirt. After a moment, he turned around with some ingredients for s’mores in his hands. “Would you like some s’mores?”  
“Uhhhh…,” I lowered my knife not knowing what happened to my voice and shuffling awkwardly as the man approached me. “Sure, yeah. Let’s do it.”   
“Might want to drop the knife,” The man pointed to it and I dropped it to the ground, losing all of my training. “There we go.”  
My whole body shifted in the moment as I approached the man, “So how might we be making these?”  
“Oh yeah, there’s a few fireplaces somewhere in the shed,” The man pointed behind me. I shifted back and turned my back on the man for the first time since I had seen him. My whole back tensed but I dared not look back behind me. The idea was to keep moving and pretend to not care about him but some of the vibes that he gave off was…weird.   
I yanked open the shed door and opened up the flashlight app, looking over the junk that had been left in the shed. But the flashlight illuminated the fire pits. I moved towards them, struggling to yank one out with just one hand but I dared not turn off the flashlight. The dark too much to the face. I took a deep breath and kept yanking the fire pit. As soon as the fire pit was halfway out of the door, I shoved my phone into my pocket and pulled the fire pit straight out of the shed and closed the shed door behind me.   
The man was working on looking for some firewood, only having grabbed some sticks. He turned to me and raised a finger that told me to wait a moment. He had already set up two chairs. I dragged the fire pit into the middle of the two chairs and a few feet ahead of us. It took a few minutes of fiddling on the gravel to get it in the right position but it finally settled into place pretty well.   
The man came back up and smiled up at me as he dumped some of the wood onto the roof. He lifted himself up with ease, muscles rippling under the tight shirt he was wearing. He threatened to rip the shirt like it was nothing. He smiled as he pulled his hair back into a bun before putting the wood down into the fire pit. I smiled as he began working on the building the fire. He made no move to even ask me for working on the fire. I moved in my seat as he finished it up and sat back in his seat.   
“You know, you would have survived if you had jumped, right?”  
“What?” The question took me off guard.   
“If you have jumped, you would have survived. You would have maybe ended up being paralyzed at worst.”  
“What I had been planning on doing is none of your business,” I shifted uncomfortably in my seat as I moved towards the chair. “None of it.”  
“I was just speculating. You were on the edge of a building looking straight down and that is never really a good sign, is it?”  
I let my guard down slightly, only a little bit, “So what if I was going to jump? It’s none of your business anyhow.”  
“Look, if we are going down this track then I want you to know that I was pretty happy to finally find out who you were.”  
“Why?”  
“Because I already know of Jaimie in the basement but she’s never around at night. But you’re around at night and it’s…comforting in a sense.”  
“I never really wanted to get to know people. So many people come and go that I don’t like getting attached.”  
“I’ve lived in LA for a whole year,” The man paused. “But only lived in this house for six months.”   
I nodded lightly and looked over my shoulder for a moment, feeling a chill run up my spine, “Yeah. Is it just me or is it really cold out here?”  
The man moved lightly as he looked over at me. He took off his jacket and handed it to me, “Someone finally getting cold?”  
“Finally?”  
“Never seen you come home with a jacket on.”   
Another chill went up my spine as I looked over at him and pushed the jacket away from me, “Are you stalking me or something?”  
“No, sorry, just saw you come home a few times and never saw you come home with a jacket on no matter how cold it is.”   
“Moved from Cleveland three years ago. Fifty degrees in the winter is nothing to me,” I shrugged and looked over at the man. “Did you move from somewhere?”  
“Just through the state, nothing really cool,” The man paused and extended a hand to me. “My name is Xavier, Xavier Williams by the way.”  
I paused for a moment as I looked down at the hand extended towards me. I took it and paused once again before taking his hand and shaking it, “Noah…just Noah.”  
“Good, now that we have introduced ourselves, you know at least one person who lives here.”  
I chuckled, “I know more than one person in the city, if you want to know. I do get out of the house, as you clearly can see.”  
“Of course,” Xavier smiled at me and let go of my hand. He reached over and grabbed a stick, handing it to me before grabbing his own. “I kind of forgot about that.”  
Xavier leaned forward and began working on his own s’more. I paused, looking over the man. He was handsome. In the moonlight, his hair seemed to glow. When he leaned over, his shirt tugged over his back and showed some of the bumps on his back. Three elongated ones over his shoulders. His eyes, when I had looked at him, were blue from what I could tell. Xavier’s golden hair was long, running past his own shoulders and had gone down to the middle of his back. He pulled himself back and looked over at me.   
Xavier had eaten part of his own s’more before he seemed to even offer me up part of his own, “What the hell are you looking at?”  
A heat rushed to my cheeks and looked down at my hands, taking my eyes off of the handsome man before moving out of the chair and picking up my own stick to make my own s’more. Xavier still sat at the fire and reached out, attempting to make another one. My whole body moved towards the man and shifted on the gravel. He moved towards the fire once more, roasting the marshmallow over the open flame and not noticing my presence anymore.   
I tapped my stick against my hand in an attempt to get his attention, “Is this how you spend your nights?”  
“Alone on an apartment building roof? Making s’mores? Occasionally. Every once in awhile. Whenever you’re not on the roof which is pretty often.”  
“Made it a point to never been seen by me?”  
Xavier nodded and moved more towards the fire, as if he was entranced by it. He looked like he was ready to jump into it if and when he was alone. I mean, fire had always entranced me too. But I would never seem that into the fire in front of me. Yet, I stared into the fire from afar, figures seeming to come out of the flames. We both sat there for what felt like only minutes but by the time I lifted my head from the flames, the sun had begun to rise.   
What happened? I lifted my head and shook it. My legs had locked into place, pain shot through me like a body. I moved towards the man and placed a hand on Xavier’s shoulder. Xavier hadn’t even finished his marshmallow, it burnt to a crisp and fallen into the fire pit. The stick he had held was burnt halfway up. I shook Xavier’s shoulder and he snapped back to reality. I moved towards the man and tried to calm him down a bit as his whole body shook. He stood suddenly, pushing me back into the gravel and shooting down the fire escape with record speed. I shook off the shock, getting up and shooting downtime fire escape only a few milliseconds after him but lost him when his window snapped shut.   
Either way, I hoped into my room and showered. It was beginning to get around the time that I should have begun to start on getting ready for work. I moved towards the edge of the room once I finished my shower, brushing out my hair while it was still wet in hopes of having my curls start being curly rather than wavy. The windows to my house were still open but I didn’t even begin to start on closing them. I didn’t really mind people watching me get dressed and stuff. Maybe I started to even begin to grow for the whole kink of it. But as soon as my hair was free of tangles, I walked back into my bathroom and dried my thick hair.   
I walked out of my house wearing what I was most comfortable in. Shorts-used to be sweatpants when I lived in Ohio-and a t-shirt which I had old assumed had been apart of some old rocker’s closet way back in the day. Granted, some of my clothes had been pulled from some old rocker’s closets when I interviewed them. My closer question was about clothes they were going to throw away and if they were willing to give some of them to me instead of throwing them away. That had gotten out me a lot of clothes when I first moved here. None of them had really minded me riffling through their old clothes for what was now vintage concert tees and nice clothes that ended up getting tailored to for me.   
The walk back to work always seemed to be shorter in the mornings than it did at night. But I had always walked home when it was dark out and the streets were a lot busier. Other than last night. Last night was eerily silent. That was the weirdest thing that I had experienced in all my time living in LA and I was thoroughly ready to just keep it in the back of my mind for the time being.   
~  
I sat on the apartment roof that night after work, not knowing what to do with the laptop set in front of me. I stood once more and let myself walk to the edge of the apartment building. What if he was right? What if all I do is paralyze myself in the long run? The thoughts weren’t the first time that I had them that day. Once before had I stepped onto a roof or carelessly went out in front of cars. But I wasn’t throughly sure that I would end up not dead. There was still a chance that I could possibly die.   
A foot went out over the edge of the roof and I swayed my weight forward then back again. I paused once more as I pulled my body back into the roof, hugging myself. My whole body moved towards the edge of the roof. I didn’t even look down but I almost jumped once more. But once again, I pulled myself back into roof.   
“Still contemplating jumping off of the roof?”   
I turned back to the voice. Xavier. He stood crossing his arms as I moved towards him. I nodded, tears coming to my eyes. His arms wrapped around me as I collapsed into him. For the first time in three years, I cried. All of the emotions I had felt before came rushing to the surface as the man held me close to his chest. His whole body was a lot more comforting than what I had normally felt. I smiled at him and looked over at him.   
“Yes,” My voice was weak as I moved closer to him and gripped him close to my chest. “Yes.”  
I moved closer to him and couldn’t even feel my own heartbeat anymore. Just his. It took me for a moment as I locked eyes with the man. He held me close to his chest as I moved away from him and tried to catch my breath. Xavier hadn’t even known me a full day and I was already crying into his chest about something he would never even begin to understand.   
“Come on, let’s get down from here,” Xavier picked me up with ease and climbed down the fire escape.  
He brought me into his apartment with a smile, setting me on the dusty couch the sat in his living room. Xavier smiled as I looked forward at him. He rummaged in a crate for a moment before moving closer to me and placing the blanket on top of me.   
“Why did you bring me here?” I whispered as I looked up at Xavier. He moved into the kitchen that I could see from my spot on the couch.   
“Because you are in a bad spot right now,” Xavier grabbed two mugs out of a cabinet and started heating up some water on the stove. He turned back around to me and smiled. “And I don’t think that you should be alone right now.”  
I could only nod wordlessly before I slumped back into the couch as Xavier walked into the doorframe and crossed his arms, “I think I should have taken you to the hospital but against better judgement I’m taking you in for the night.”  
I nodded and curled into the blanket. There’d been many times over the past three years that I thought about doing something like that. I would have never thought about even doing something like what I was about to do and having someone put me in the hospital. I nodded and moved towards Xavier ever so slightly.   
“You look tired, Noah. Get some sleep. I’ll be here in the morning,” Xavier gave me one last smile before turning back around and heading into the kitchen.   
I curled into the blanket and looked over at him. I moved away from the open end of the couch and placed my back against the edge of it. My whole body was tense but my eyes were heavy. I hadn’t been tired before. But there I was, as tired as ever. A yawn escaped my mouth for a moment before I finally sunk into the couch and let myself finally fall asleep.   
~  
The air around me was super cold. Colder than most winters that I had experienced on record. The wind whipped at my hair as I stood up on my tiptoes to inspect my surroundings further. The lights of Los Angles was down below me. I wrapped my arms around my waist, lace meeting my fingertips for the first time since I was a child. My back tensed at the feeling before I looked down at my hands on my waist. A white lace dress met me and I almost threw up at the sight of it. My whole body threatened to teeter off of whatever I was standing on. I shifted and looked over my shoulder back at whatever could help me identify the place I was. But there was only place I was at. The Hollywood sign. I gulped, knowing exactly what I might be doing up here.   
There had been an actress whose case I followed for a while because I thought there might have been something supernatural about it. She had been a stage actress but when movies came about and started become more popular than plays. When she tried out for some movies, it didn’t work out. She had become super depressed because of it. One day, she wrote a note, climbed to the top of the H in the Hollywood sign and threw herself off of it. That same day, she had gotten another rejection letter but little did she know was that it was a mistake and her acceptance would come only a few hours later.   
I was at the top of the Hollywood sign. I moved to the edge and almost threw myself off of it. But my feet did it for me. I was the not the only one who had jumped off though. I twisted onto my back midair and watched as an angel flew towards me. Soft, red curls that barely touched his ears and beautiful freckles. His wings, two sets like the ones I had seen before, were golden which was new to me. He had a hand outstretched but that was all I saw before my back hit the ground.   
~  
“Morning,” Xavier turned to me as I shot up from my sleep. He was standing shirtless in the kitchen. I rubbed my eyes and stood from my seat. My legs were weak and my back hurt like a motherfucker.   
“Morning,” My voice was hoarse as I moved closer to the kitchen standing in the doorframe and looking towards the table.   
A man sat at the table with some cereal in a bowl. He raised a hand in a hello and I did the same back to him. He smiled before going back to the cereal. But upon further notice, he had the same red curls and freckles as the man in my dream that night. I shifted in my spot for a moment before walking over to the table, taking a seat right across from the redhead who gave me a sweet smile. He couldn’t have been much older than me, maybe nineteen or twenty.   
“I hope Xavier was as good as he hyped himself up to be,” The redhead smiled before Xavier took a rolled up newspaper to his head. “What? You’re the one who’s always bringing home a new piece of ass every night.”  
“I am not like that, I promise,” Xavier turned to the redhead. “That’s our neighbor dumbass. He-he?-stayed the night.”  
“Anything but she, really,” I said quieter then what I would have wanted but I was never as assertive as what I would have liked. The redhead nodded, going back to his cereal for a few bites.   
“That’s Faukes, by the way. He was so rude that he didn’t even introduce himself,” Xavier bent down to be cheek level with the redhead and pinched his cheeks. “He’s like my kid brother.”  
“More like you forcibly adopted me,” Faukes rolled his eyes and extended a hand to me. “Nice to meet you, neighbor. I also prefer anything but ‘she’, so does Xavier but he would never tell you that. He’d rather you figure that out on your own and that usually means a punch to the face.”  
“So queers really do come in groups, don’t they,” This earned a chuckle from both of the men in the room.   
“I guess you could say that,” Faukes looked up at me, sweet eyes burrowing into mine before he took one last bite of his food and placed the empty bowl into the sink. “It was nice meeting you…”  
“Noah,” I interjected realizing that I hadn’t even given Faukes my name. “The name is Noah…Noah Abbot.”  
The last name had just slipped. Both Xavier and Faukes paused for a moment as soon as my last name left my lips. Faukes backed up into the doorway exiting the kitchen to the bathroom and bedrooms. He practically rushed out of the kitchen and back to his bedroom. Xavier turned to me and placed a plate right in front of me. He rubbed his hands together nervously before sitting down stiffly right where Faukes had once sat. His own plate in front of him as well.   
“Do you want some syrup? Butter?” Xavier looked up from his plate for only a moment before looking back down at the pancakes.   
“Some syrup and butter please…” I whispered in hopes of not being heard. “If it’s not too much trouble, some orange juice too.”  
“The Abbot family, huh?” Xavier stood up and walked over to the fridge. “Must be nice, old money, isn’t it?”  
“Abbot by way of adoption,” Both James and David had adopted me under the table. No forms had been signed but they were the only true family I had left but I had abandoned the family. Occasionally they would send money my way but that was only for my birthday and Christmas. “They don’t really care about the children they adopt.”  
“Still, it’s said they used to hunt monsters. Almost to the point of extinction. Towns used to pay them off from what I heard.”   
“So it has been said,” I nodded carefully as I looked up at him. “Do you have connections to the Abbots in any way? Both you and Faukes?”  
“Yes,” Xavier set down the butter and orange juice. He walked over to a cupboard to get the syrup and a glass. “My family was hunted by them once.”  
“I am so sorry,” My voice was still low as the man turned back to me. For a brief moment, his eyes turned a golden color. Through, when I looked back at him, his eyes were back to the blue that they had been before. “I know that there was no reason for them to be hunted.”  
“Damn straight,” Xavier sat back down and looked over at me. He shuffled a bit and looked at me. “You should get back to your apartment soon, freshen up.”  
~  
I walked around my bedroom, my finger over the speed dial. My whole body tensed as I contemplated who I might just be calling. The Abbots were my brothers. They were the ones who had helped me so much during my own trials. That dream was weird though. James and David weren’t the only ones who had the knowledge that I so desperately needed. Their uncle was the one who had set them up for a life of hunting.   
I paced in my room for a moment, not knowing what to do. No one would ever want to pick up to me. I hadn’t spoken to them in three years. Not since I moved out of Ohio where we had all had a home base at one point. But now, since I was out of the house and in California, it was harder to keep in contact with them. I wanted a clean break and that meant breaking away from the life that I had helped build for myself there. The one meant to hunt and kill monsters. Hell, the Abbots were still getting paid for the work that they did.   
My body tensed once more as I looked over my shoulder at the photo of us in front of my grandfather’s old cabin. My grandfather stood behind all three of us. James and David sat on either side of me. James’ green eyes was the first thing that I had noticed. His smile seemed forced but he had always hated taking pictures. David had his arm around my much smaller frame. My grandfather had his hands on either shoulder of my brothers. It was a nice picture until you looked further into the background. An eyeless woman sat in the back of the photo. My grandfather was a little too transparent for a a human being. My body moved towards the photo as my fingers brushed against the frame. It was the last summer that I had spent with the Abbot brothers before I left him.   
“I wish I could call you both,” My body shuddered as I pulled away from the picture and dropping my own phone to the ground as electricity coursed through my veins.  
The electricity still moved through my body as I went outside to the porch and sat down on the one chair that I had brought to California with me. It was the only thing that had been in my house when I left it. Everything else had been sold to give me some moving money. A green rocking chair that held way too much importance to me to let go. The sun hit my face and warmed it up.   
“Hey, neighbor,” Faukes leaned his head over the top of the porch and smiled at me. “Mind if I come down?”  
“I thought that you didn’t want to hang out with an Abbot like me.”   
“What makes you think that? Just because Xavier’s family was attacked by yours hundreds of years ago, doesn’t mean that I can’t hang out with you.”  
“Fine then, come on down.”   
Faukes jumped down and looked at me with wide green eyes. He looked like a literal child, hanging down from the banister with a wide smile. His hair was damp from what looked like a shower. He shook his head, sending water flecks towards me and onto my face. I laughed and looked over at him as he lowered himself down onto my porch.   
“You know, I saw someone just like you last night in my dream,” Faukes said, pretty unprompted while he sat down on the railing across from me. “He was the spitting image of you. Scared the shit out of me when I saw you this morning. He said he was in danger and that he was going to need some help. Even told me your name. It was…weird.”   
“I saw you in my dream last night too but you were…saving me from dying. Or at least attempting to do so.”  
Faukes nodded and reached out a hand once more and chuckled, “Weird but I guess we’re dream buddies now.”  
I took his hand and smiled at him. It was so weird to me. I had barely met the man and his roommate and now both of them were in my life and so heavily. He smiled lightly as he looked me over.   
“So, got any plans for the day?


	3. Chapter Two: David Abbott

My body flung against the wall. Bones cracked. Bruises were going to be there tomorrow. James called out to me, the sounds of the hellhounds tearing into his flesh was more of a motivation to get up. I grunted. The pain moved through my body as I stumbled towards the sound of my brother. Hellhounds were a lot harder to kill. It took more strength than what I had in me to do. My whole body moved towards my brother and his screams. My body ached once more as I moved through the hallway into the room I had just been tossed out of. James sat on the ground with a knife extended towards the black dog-like creature. James looked up at me and raised a hand to shush me. But the hound turned towards me, stalking towards me while James slowly got up.  
“Noah,” The hound looked into my eyes, smoke emitting from his mouth as he moved towards me. “Noah is an abomination. Noah is in danger. Noah…is in trouble.”  
I walked back into the wall. James lifted the knife above his head and locked eyes with me for a moment. He raised a finger to him lips. James stalked forward and plunged the knife deep between the hound’s ribs. He moved away from the hound and stepped on the side of hound, pulling the knife out of the the beast. It burst into flames hotter than any earthly fire I ever felt. The house didn’t burst into flames though. Hell fire wasn’t a tangible fire to anywhere else but hell. Though it could hurt like a bitch if you touched it or came into any sort of contact with it.  
James brushed off any dust and ash that he fell onto his suit. He huffed and smacked my face a good few times lovingly. He wiped off any blood that was on the knife and tucked it back into the waistband, “Come on, we’ve got a party to return to.”  
“He…he said something about Noah,” I looked at James who had already wrapped an arm around me and started pushing me back towards the party.  
“And? We haven’t spoke to that son-of-a-bitch in three years? What’s your point?”  
“What do you mean? He said Noah was in danger!”  
James kept walking but didn’t respond to me. My lungs struggled to take in air though it was useless to go to the hospital. I only heard two cracks and that was it. It could have been more than just the two ribs but I didn’t care. I was just ready to get out of there as soon as possible. James had shut down the conversation anyways. There was no use in getting him to speak about Noah again. He was a lost cause when it came to our brother.  
Noah had left the life when his sister was murdered. He didn’t want to have to think about monsters when his sister’s murderer was out there. He would much rather keep his head in the game. We expected him to come back after a few months but that was about it. We never heard from him since. He just disappeared. James had spent the first few months helping Noah out with leads. But that was gone after a few weeks. I had still sent money to him on his birthday and Christmas just to fill my own gap in my heart.  
Noah was a good man with a heart of gold. But he was not the man I once thought him to be. When his sister had been murdered, out entire dynamic shifted within a few short heartbeats. I had been pushed to the side and the person that mattered most was the one who left as soon as she could, leaving Noah alone to fend for himself for the better part of a decade. I wasn’t saying that she wasn’t important in keeping back the beatings that Noah took in his early years, it was just that he never really received any kind of love from her for so long that it felt odd to see him go off into the great unknown and leave behind those who had actually cared for him. Though, look where that got him. He was completely alone now.  
I moved towards the edge of the stairs and walked down with James. He held his head high for the guests at the party. Though, none of them were noticing that he had a bit of blood on his face. He quickly wiped the blood off of his face. He moved towards a beautiful woman wearing a red dress. He moved away from me. His eyes drifting away from me and leaving me alone. I kept my body at the top of the stairs for a moment, earning the eyes of those who had been down below me. My eyes moved over those who had looked up at me.  
As soon as they locked eyes with me, they turned away. The people in the room began chattering and whispering to each other. The black sheep of the family. Of course, I was the one who had known who Noah was…an outsider to the group that was supposed to keep people like him out. But, there was a reason that James kicked Noah out as fast as he had. He had a reason and didn’t tell me why. Hell, he didn’t even tell me the reason that I was still in the family even though it was pretty clear that I was the same black sheep that Noah was.  
“Well, come on down here, pretty boy,” A man with dark hair all over his body moved towards me. “Don’t want to miss the party, do you?”  
“No,” I whispered as I moved towards the edge of the stairs. “I think I am good up here, don’t you think?”  
James smiled at me from his position next to the woman in the red dress. His smile was bigger than anything I had ever seen before. A bit of blood clung to his neck. His eyes seemed to hold a daze that I had seen more than once. He was losing it already. It was the first time I had seen him lose it so fast though. He moved away from the woman and waltzed over to another woman, sure enough he would have her heart in a few moments as well.  
The man moved towards me, “You should really get down here…red-blood.”  
I cringed at the term. It was not the best term to be called in the world that I am in. When I was young, I thought hunting monsters was the best thing to do. To keep the world safe from those who were messing up the world. Little did I realize, the monsters were us. Our blood had been mixed with that of the monsters, making us somewhere between human and full blown monster. Our kind had been hired to hunt humans or monsters. Our dad had convinced us that we were hunting monsters but in reality, we were hunting humans…mostly humans. Whoever gave us the most money, we would go after whoever they wanted. Monsters had the most money, considering they had hundreds of years to accumulate it. My whole family was considered the best. That’s how we ended up with so much expendable income. But that was it.  
Red-bloods were this who had this history of being half-human and half-monster but turned out with seemingly human blood. Some of them had been had developed powers later than puberty. But I hadn’t been able to develop my powers. I was the one who had never developed any powers. I was just as human as Noah. Guess that pissed him off? But that was years ago when were hunting monsters for hire. When we were stopped for cash. The humans paid better than the monsters at some points and I was going to be the one sacrificed when we went on all the hunts. Including tonight.  
I rushed back up the stairs to my room. My body shuttling under the weight. My father’s portrait at the end of the hallway faced back at me. His dark eyes stared into my soul. Such a shame. He was a waste of werewolf blood. A waste of perfectly good talent. This man was the person meant to be my father and yet he was the one who made me…do irredeemable things at such a young age. That fucking idiot who decided to breed with another hybrid like my mother. She was the sweeter one of the two. The one with more human blood than werewolf blood which made here less likely to be on the side of those who were human than those who were supposed to be her…kin.  
I stopped at the end of the hallway and looked over at the man who had somehow decided to create me. He was far dead now, not even having been around long enough for me to get an idea of who he really was in my head. I was robbed of having to see that man face the consequences of his actions. To see how bad the society his family built had fallen. It was the worst part of having him gone so soon. He wasn’t the one who I had the problem with. It was the whole society that had a problem. The one underground that killed each other for sport.  
Noah. The thought ran through my head as I moved into my lavish room, way too big for one person. Noah had spent went too many nights in here when he would ‘take school trips’ and I would have him come over for a few days during the school week. Nothing bad ever happened, no. He was way too young and I was still only a few years older than him but that didn’t stop Noah trying to put the moves on me. But I would rather not think about it. Both of us were just dumb teens…dumb…adults now.  
James was living a longer life than expected due to the fact that he had werewolf blood running through his veins. He was the person I had never hated for being apart of the monster community. He was my brother…and he was the one I had grown up with. But he wasn’t above me almost taking money to take him out. He was the person who had excused the abuse my dad had given to me. He was the one who had sat by and watched me get beat. He was the one who had just…excused everything.  
But this room as not to be tainted by James. James was not going to ruin the one place I had left that reminded me of Noah. The last person who had ever cared for me. The last person who had…loved me. The last person who had ever been alive to see me that actually gave a shit about me. It sucked, but he was that person to me. To see that he had…just possibly been snapped off the face of the earth then I would never forgive myself. I would never forgive myself.  
I went to the dresser drawer and looked down at the piles of shirts in the dresser. The first one my eyes landed on…an old band tee that looked older than both James and I combined. It was Noah’s. One he had given to me when I was feeling down. Said it was from Slash’s closet and that he had gotten some really cool pieces from him. I slipped off my suit, still stained with blood. No one had even noticed that there was blood on it. I tossed it to the side and placed it in the pile of clothes in the corner before pulling on the shirt.  
It felt like home…and home was Noah. But he wasn’t here anymore. He wasn’t here. I walked over to the bed, flopping down onto it. The room was lit by candles. We had electricity but James said that the candles led to some ambiance. At least during parties, we used them. It fucking sucked because I never remembered to blow them out. I moved towards the extra pillow in bed and held it close to my chest. It was the only part of the comfort that I felt.  
~  
“James,” I whispered, looking up across the table towards the man at the end. He lifted his head and grunted. “I think we should find Noah.”  
James stopped in his tracks, looking at me, “No fucking way, David. There is no reason for us to be dealing with him anymore. He doesn’t need us, proved that to us three years ago.”  
“James, you’re just going to let your kin stay in possible danger? Hell, we don’t even know if he’s alive!”  
“He’s not our kin,” James’ voice was so loud that the candle holders on the table shook. He growled, moving away from the table and walking over to me. “He is not one of us.”  
“Oh yes he is,” I locked eyes with my brother. “You were the one who decided to adopt Noah into this fucking shit world. We were supposed to keep it secret. You know we’re the last of us and we needed the help.”  
“What? The last hunters? The last Abbots? That doesn’t fucking matter. He’s not one of us! Not one of us and you know what that means?”  
“What? We stop giving a shit about our brother as soon as he leaves us?”  
“He’s not our fucking brother!”  
“So you’re just going to forget that he ever fucking existed and the danger he might really be in? If that hound knew about him then you know that he is going to be in danger.”  
James shifted in his spot, out of words for such a hot headed man. His ears were red and his chest heaved. I smiled, knowing that I had gotten him. There was nothing for him to say. He would have to know that I was right. He just wouldn’t say it. By his silence, I knew that I was going to be right. That I was the one who had been the one who had put my brother in his place. He was the one who knew it too.  
I looked over at his untouched breakfast. It was still steaming. As was mine. But he was about as steamy as his breakfast right now. I could laugh. But laughing would only anger my brother even more. I smiled at him before I moved towards him, standing up to look up at my brother. I pushed him away from me and walked over to the doorway leading out of the small dinging room and into the rest of the house.  
“Either way,” I paused for dramatic effect as James turned around to face me. “I’m going to find Noah. With or without your approval.”  
This set James off and he lunged towards me. He placed his hand on my neck and yanked me towards him. My throat closed at the pressure. James moved towards me and smiled at me. His hand applied more pressure than what I would have liked. But that was exactly what he wanted. How he wanted me to feel. He easily lifted me up off of the ground and placed me against the wall. My body was crushed by James’ strength. My body left a bent on the wall as James smiled up at me. More bones cracked in my body. More ribs hurt and cracked. James bared his fangs at me and lunged towards my neck almost as if he wanted to take a bite out of me.  
“You do need my approval, red-blood,” The word hurt more coming from my brother. Tears welled up in my eyes as I looked down at my much older brother. “You are human. You don’t have the abilities I do and you know it. There is no reason for you to be going out on your own.”  
“You would be no where without my research,” I chocked out to my brother. He released some of the pressure on my neck to allow me to speak. “No where without me knowing every single piece of knowledge out there about your kind. Do you understand me? You wouldn’t even know half of what you’re capable of without me by your side researching everything about your kind.”  
James sat there holding me up as he looked over at me. His eyes danced over mind for a moment as he released more pressure on my neck. He eventually dropped me to the ground. My whole body dropped and landed on the ground. I groaned as I rubbed my neck.  
“You’re right,” James sighed as he looked me over. He sighed and backed away from me with his head down. “You are totally right.”  
“What?”  
“You’re right about Noah being in danger…possible danger,” James still hung his head in shame as he looked over at me.  
“You’ve never told me that I’ve been right before,” James looked over at me as he turned back to the breakfast on the table. “But…that doesn’t matter.”  
“It shouldn’t,” James looked over at me. He gave me a snarl before sitting back down at his seat and poking at the still steaming human entrails on his plate. His palate never ceasing to amaze me. No matter the food…or person…he could scarf it down almost immediately.  
I went back to my own food, normal food that my mom and I would normally eat while my father and James would end up eating the human intestines that they had farmed from the night before. It was much worse than what I had thought, to be honest. We were supposed to be a human beings…not the monsters that were going to eventually take over the world we lived in. Scientists had said that normal people like me were going to go extinct soon. That we no longer going to exist in ten to fifteen years. This is not what I originally had planned out but I had to save my own kind.  
“You know…I think I’m going to take my breakfast in my room,” I picked up my own plate and waved off the made who had flashed me her fangs as I passed by her. I grabbed another roll and another spoonful of scrambled eggs.  
Fuck you too. Don’t forget I’m the one who suggested the blackout curtains when half of your kind got burnt. I moved past the woman and kept my head down as I rushed up to my own room. My eyes dropping down to the carefully piled up food on the plate. I grabbed the top of the food and sat down on my bed. Noah’s shirt still sat on the edge of the bed from where I had left it that morning before I changed into my own clothes for the day. I moved in my seat, looking down at my hands for a moment. No utensils. I picked up my plate and shoved the food into my mouth with one hand.  
I rinsed my hands off of the gunk on my hands. It would be a crime to waste such deliciousness on my hands but such was the way of eating with your hands. But that was the least of my worries. I would have much rather used a fork but that was about it. I moved over to the mirror and locked eyes with my face in the mirror. A scar ran down the right side of my face. Another hellhound hd wrecked that side of my face. Left me not really well off in that eye. But that was the best part of my face. People said that I was a handsome man…with or without the scar.  
I gripped onto the sink and moved towards the mirror, locking eyes with the man facing back at me once more. Fuck, was that one ugly mug if I do say so myself. Super fucking ugly. My eyes darted over to the shower behind me. It sat untouched for weeks. Water droplets clung to the tile in the shower. It had only just been used. Everything in my life went neglected when James was around and calling the shots. Showers, eating, sleeping…the works. Fuck James and fuck his ‘leadership’.  
My eyes went over myself as I looked over at the man. He was ugly. Ugly as an asshole. The scar was blood red as if it had just been cut in certain lights from the hellfire still running through it. The hound who had given it to me was named Cerberus and he wasn’t actually dead. He was one of three hounds that often separated themselves for better chasing. He wasn’t really a hound either. But a hound in the sense of what he acted like.  
“David,” A maid walked into my room. One of the only humans that we had allowed into the house. “Your brother called for you.”  
“Tell him I’ll be down in a few minutes, yeah?”  
The maid nodded and moved away from me. I straightened my own body and clothing before moving back to the room, picking up the shirt Noah had given me. James stood at the bottom of the stars as I moved slowly down at the stairs towards the man. He smiled up at me for a moment before waving me into the drawing room. I followed him wordlessly and waited for him to start talking like me normally did. But he didn’t speak.  
“David, are you sure that you want to go through with trying to find Noah,” James kept looking at me and folded his hands in his lap.  
“Yes,” I whispered but looked at James who-even with his superhuman hearing-didn’t seem to hear me. “Yes, I want to find Noah.”  
“Then you know you can’t go to the police about it?”  
“James, you know that I can’t do my job without going to the police. If we are tracking humans then it means going to the police.”  
“I don’t want you going to them for Noah,” James shifted in his seat as I looked him over. “They can’t know that he is ‘missing’.”  
“James. I swear on all that is good and holy-,” James hissed. “I have to go to the police and if I can’t do that then we might as well shut off the search for him right now.”  
James moved in his seat as I looked over my shoulder. My whole body moved over to the seat. I locked eyes with him. James let out a sigh as I stood, walking over to the alcohol cart, pouring myself a shot of whiskey and downing it in a moment. James outstretched his hand, a maid making him a shot as well before he sipped on it for a moment as I turned back over to him.  
“So are we going to fucking to do this or not?”  
James sighed once more and rubbed his temples, “Fine. You can go to the police about Noah but just let me know when and if they might be searching the house. I’ve got things to hide. You have lead on the case too, okay? I follow whatever you say and whatever you do is going to be on the family.”  
“But-,”  
“No ifs, ands or buts David. You’re the one who wants to find that Satan spawn of a man then you’re going to be the one leading the investigation, you hear me?”  
“Yes sir,” I bowed my head to my older brother. “Thank you for the opportunity.”  
“Now go,” James shooed me off. Just like father used to do when I was younger. I shifted around in my spot and turned up to look at another portrait of my father. His eyes glaring down at me. “He-,”  
James never finished that sentence. He cut himself off before he could. I walked up the stairs, leaving him and the sentence hanging in the air as I moved off up to the second level. My body swayed at the top of the stairs. My heart fluttered in my chest as I looked over the balcony to steady myself. My head swirled for a moment. I stood right back up, walking back to my room.  
~  
The police swirled around all of us, carrying as much as he could in his arms. I had only expected two or three of them to show up. But it seemed all of them had decided to show up for the investigation of a lifetime. I shifted in my spot as I looked over my shoulder and locked eyes with my brother. He rolled his eyes as he tapped his fingers on his biceps.  
“When was the last time you saw Noah?” The cop’s voice made me turn my attention back to the investigation at hand.  
“About three years ago,” I replied as vaguely as I could, already coached on what to say to the police when I was being interrogated.  
“How old was Noah the last time you saw him?”  
“Fifteen.”  
“Which would make him eighteen now,” The cop wrote down a few things on his notepad. “Did he say where he was headed?”  
“California,” The cop wrote something else down on his notepad.  
“Did he give you a reason as to why he was going there?”  
“He said his sister was murdered,” The cop’s eyebrows shot up for a second before he lifted his head back up to look at me. “But I don’t know how real that was.”  
“Did either of you get into a fight before he left?”  
I am going to find my sister’s murderer whether you like it or not! I shook my head as Noah’s voice went through my head.  
“No, not at all,” I smiled at the cop attempting to keep the cops from suspecting either one of us. “We were perfectly happy.”  
“Do you have anything else of Noah’s still here? Things we could use in our investigation? Evidence?”  
I paused, looking back at the boxes that the police were dragging out of the mansion we lived in. I swallowed the huge amount of saliva that had collected in my mouth as I dragged the man as far out of earshot of James as I could and into a darkened corner of the front room. The cop stared at me with wide eyes for a moment.  
“Come with me,” I dragged the cop up the stairs and into my room. He stared at me like I was not from this world. “You can not report this to my brother.”  
I riffled in my closet as I looked over my shoulder at the cop. His notebook had been slightly crumpled and his shirt had been wrinkled in my panic. The feeling of slightly damp cardboard hit my hand under the pile of clothes in the back of my closet and dragged out a box. The cop’s eyes widened as I handed the box to him. I quickly checked the date on the box and smiled at the cop.  
“I am only giving you this one and I expect it to come back to me in the same condition I am giving it to you,” The cop nodded lightly as I locked eyes with him. “And I do expect them back. These are all from the time that Noah first left us.”  
The cop nodded and left the room, almost bumping into my brother on the way out. My heart dropped into my stomach as his eyes glowed a sickly yellow. He rushed towards me and pinned my arms against the wall. His fangs flashed as he attempted to get me down to his level. The most primal, animalistic part of all humans that I had met whether they had powers like James or not.  
“You’ve had contact with Noah all this fucking time and never told me!”  
“Yes,” I snapped back at my brother. “Someone had to make sure he was adjusting to the fact that his sister and only caretaker had been murdered!”  
James adjusted his grip on my wrists, drawing blood with his “You went against my word! Against father’s command!”  
“Oh like you haven’t done that before!” James snarled and placed his claws deeper into my skin. We sat in silence for a brief moment. “Fuck that shit, we deserve to have a normal investigation and you said I was the one who was put in charge of this, by you. So I don’t think I need to be questioned by you about what evidence I give to the police.”  
I shoved my brother off of me and out of my room. He was still seething behind the door. His scratches would no doubt be on the door later. I laid down on the bed, not even bothering to work on the injuries on my arm until much later. I shifted and just waited for this hell day to be over much quicker than it was going.


	4. Chapter Three: James Abbot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this took so long to get out. I've been getting sick lately.

Noah, David and I all sat in the room. All three of us sat there for a moment. The men in the room had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Women weren’t allowed to be in any court proceedings of such a manner. With all of the blood and guts that would be presented as evidence. The only women that I had ever seen work on the case were some police officers and some therapists. But they were the only ones who were allowed in the courtroom. All of the other people in the courtroom were men.   
Noah sat in his chair with a muzzle wrapped around his face. For a moment, his eyes glinted happily. Noah reached out a hand and gave us both a smile. A sinister yet strangely comforting smile. He tilted his head to the side and seemed to pull us both back into his grip. His eyes glowing red for a moment before turning back to their normal hazel.   
I never got used to his eyes. They were so cold and unfeeling. Looking right through you. His eyes though. Once sparkling and bright green were now completely blacked out with skin around it as charred as wood after a fire. The only indication of eyes anymore were the occasional spurts of color coming from his iris. Otherwise, it became black most of the time. His eyes, ones that used to be so happy but now they held something far more sinister. A mark of what had happened to him.   
The large wings he sported were also a mark of what had happened to him. Though, no one else in the room could see them. Only a select few were allowed to see what had happened to him fully. One black and charred and still burning with hellfire. The other one was made of bright white feathers. A sign of his heavy ties to Xavier. Xavier’s wings would soon turn the charred color Noah sported though. It was only a matter of time. One day, Noah’s wings would all be charred too. There was no faking that his soul was fueled by hell and that he was stronger than the king of hell himself.   
His soul…it wasn’t there. But right in the belly where a soul should be was full of dark red hellfire, made from the blood of those who were suffering in hell. Kept alive by the new souls going down there every single day. As long as people were on earth, there would be deaths to fuel his fire.  
His skin was as scaly as a dragons. Even if he didn’t look that way, his skin was dark and charred from the fire he had endured from dragging himself out of hell. But that was only if he wanted you to see it. Otherwise, it was kept hidden under the smooth, soft skin he kept over it.   
I had felt it once…the skin he had underneath the one he chose to wear as a facade. It was like holding the worst and best parts of you all at one time. It…it’s indescribable. I couldn’t even tell what would happen if I were to feel it more than a few seconds. It felt like your soul had been taken out of your body, entangled between a python’s body and spat back out. That was only a few seconds. If I had endured any more, I would only have to assume that I wouldn’t have a soul anymore.   
I moved closer to him and touched the soft skin I only hoped to feel in real life. If I were to ever feel it in real life. This was real life, wasn’t it? As real as it could get for me right now. I was more confused than ever. I was with Noah but never really with him. He was cold and detached and gross now.   
His eyes darted up to me, flicking back to what his now more normal eyes before looking back at the judge who had sat down in front of me. I moved in my seat as Noah stared me with daggers in his eyes. His eyes darted back to the judge before I shifted back. Everyone was silent in the courtroom.The cameras were silent and so was I. Noah’s grunts were muffled by the muzzle on his face. He was obviously annoyed.   
The judge rubbed his temples and locked eyes with our lawyer, “Where is the prosecution?”   
“I have no idea,” Our lawyer smirked and looked over his shoulder to the people recording the trial. A few of the cameramen even looked behind them as well as if looking for someone who might come in at any moment. “Should we keep waiting?”  
“Yes, we keep waiting. There’s no use in delaying the trial anymore.” The judge locked eyes with me as Noah continued to shoot daggers at their target.   
The door slammed shut behind all of us. David jumped in his seat. Noah stood still with his back pressed against the wooden chair. If he had been seen as even a mere threat to anyone in the room, he would have been kept for some other day. But I guess he was not as much of a threat as I had originally thought. The newest lawyer sauntered in. Air let out into the room as if everyone had let go of a breath they didn’t know they were holding in. The lawyer’s hair was long and blonde, almost touching their ass in waves that threatened to be curls if they worked at it hard enough. She smiled and turned towards the jury with a thousand watt smile on her face. A female lawyer? In a murder trial? It had only happened back when before the world changed. A female lawyer would only happen in misdemeanor trial.   
“I apologize for my lateness,” She set her briefcase on the table. “I was just put on the case and I…”  
Our lawyer shot up and placed his hands on his own table, “Your honor, a woman in a murder trial of this caliber?”  
“I know the social standards,” The judge looked back at hm and placed his hands in front of him. “But I do know past precedent and she is allowed to speak for the country when it comes to the trial if her firm so asks her to.”   
“And they do, your honor,” The woman smiled and fiddled with her hands for a moment. “Ms. Williams, your honor.”   
“Nice to meet you. We have a long trial ahead of us. Opening statements for the People vs The Abbots begins.”   
The media kept snapping pictures and recording every second of the the trial. The opening statement made me want to fall asleep. It was the most boring part of the trial if you asked me. This was all a formality nowadays. It was just there to make both parties feel better about themselves. But the media ate it up like we were the ones speaking. But that would have to be dealt with after lunch when witness testimony began.   
David shifted right next to me, his elbow hitting my own. I whipped my head to the side to look at him. He smiled lightly as David passed a piece of paper to Noah. My fist balled up as I moved towards the edge of the table. David’s eyes darted over mine for a moment before going back to Noah. The media snapped some more photos as Noah’s eyes burned a hole in some of the cameras, rendering them useless for the time being while the videographers began to work on getting another camera to work with.   
“Noah,” David’s voice was hushed as he rammed an elbow into Noah’s ribs. “You can’t just do that. No one knows.”  
You would think that people would have found out that Noah was a monster that could have killed us all if he was pissed off for even the finest amount of time and sent us all to suffer in Hell for all eternity. He was ready to be set off at any point. The muzzle and handcuffs would not stop him even though they gave up the air of protection to the media in the room since he was the most ‘dangerous’. But the handcuffs could easily melted by Noah if he hadn’t been forced to eat a bucketful of ice before he walked into the room which cooled him down for a short enough time for them to get the handcuffs onto him. But he would soon begin to heat up and he would have to be cooled down again. His eyes moved over the room.   
“I don’t care if anyone knows,” The necklace around Noah’s neck glowed a bright blue. “They would much rather care about putting us in jail.”  
“James Abbot, David Abbot and Noah Hudson, please rise.”  
All three of us rose, our hands in a row on the table. Noah’s eyes seemed to burn a hole into the men in the room. David’s eyes darted around the room once more. A smile on his face as the woman who had been in the room this entire time. She didn’t seem nervous at all. She just sat with a smug smile on her face as if she knew she was going to win the case. But there would be no way for her to really win. She didn’t even deserve to be here. She wasn’t supposed to be here. That was the most wonderful part of this trial already. A woman in the courtroom.   
“Would you like to remind the court on how you all have pleaded?”  
“Guilty,” I shot a look at David. His face twisted for a moment as silence washed over the courtroom. A few seconds seemed to turn into a few minutes.   
“Guilty,” David’s cheek pulled in as he chewed on the inside of it for a few moment. David’s eyes dropped down to his hands before he moved his own eyes towards Noah who never seemed so eager to enter his own plea.   
“Not guilty by reason of insanity.”  
The courtroom mumbled in shock. Camera shutters filled the room as the media attempted to capture Noah’s face in the few moments that had just happened. Our lawyer shot Noah a look that only a disappointed dad could, reaching over a grabbing his hand in his own. The judge slammed his gavel on his table.   
“Order,” The judge sighed and looked down at the women. I shifted in my spot to give a shocked look over at Noah. No one seemed to calm down. “Order!”  
Noah cleared his thought, “I said what I said, your honor.”   
“I heard you correctly, Mr. Hudson. I just want you to realize the gravity of the situation at hand.”   
“I am aware of the consequences you honor,” Noah bowed his head. Our lawyer looked up at the judge.   
“I request a recess to talk to my client,” He smiled as best he could. “We obviously haven’t had the chance to discuss this.”  
“Of course,” The judge banged his gavel against the table and smiled down at our lawyer. “Recess granted.”  
~  
David sat right next to me. His fingers tapped on the table as our lawyer talked to Noah. The piece of glass separating the two of us from them was thick. We couldn’t even think about what had happened to Noah in the few hours that had happened since then and now. Noah was the one who had decided to fuck everything up but that wasn’t even the worst part.   
“David, what is going to happen to us,” My voice quivered. David looked over me, his eyes scanning for any sense of faking but as soon as he saw none, he tapped on the table once more.   
“You know what happens. There’s nothing we can do about jail time,” David sighed as he grabbed a manilla folder off of the table and began to leaf through it. “All we can do is hope and pray that one of us can get off. We just don’t know who.”  
“Think Noah will be the one to get off?”  
“No way,” David shifted in his seat. “If anything, it would be you.”  
I leaned back in my chair and watched the men in the other room. Our lawyer threw his hands up and slammed them down on the table so hard that the glass wobbled in front of the two of us. A groan left my mouth as I moved away from the glass and turned towards my brother. His eyes darted over some of the papers in the manila folder.   
“Nothing in here about Noah seeing a therapist,” David deadpanned. “The prosecution is going to ask for an eval.”  
“So?” I tapped my fingers on the table once more. “Not like Noah won’t go.”  
David shot me another look, “Do you not remember what happened before? With what Noah had said?”  
I shook my head, suppressing the memory as best I could as I watched Noah and our lawyer seemingly yell about what Noah had said in the courtroom. I had no other guess as to what they were saying. My body turned towards the man as I locked eyes with my brother who had looked up from the papers as long as he could before turning back to them.   
I sighed and took some of the papers from David, “Can someone turn on the TV?”  
A guard whimpered, a rookie no doubt, and walked into the room with his head down. He moved past the both of us and turned the TV on to some news station. Then he was gone as soon as he showed up. David had only lifted his eyes once to look at the man. He was too engrossed in his own reading to care much about what was going on around him.   
The newscaster rambled about the three of us. We were the talk of the town apparently.   
“Today started the trial of The Abbot brothers and their associate, Noah Hudson,” The newscaster’s voice was as serious as they can some. Only heard when little kids went missing. “The Abbots and Hudson are charged with at least eighty confirmed counts of murder along with corpse desecration and credit card fraud.”   
David let out a groan and tapped the back of the folder, “If only they knew.”  
“You know they can’t,” I whispered and waited for the moment where David would come and beat my ass for that but he didn’t. “They can never know.”   
A heat rose behind the both of us, the TV letting out a few sparks. Neither of us wanted to look back. Part of me did but another part of me said to not move an inch or feel the wrath of Noah. My back straightened a bit as I lifted the papers I had taken from David towards my face. Part of my own testimony stared back at me. A smile on my face as I scanned over some of the few words that stood out to me.   
“Noah is angry as hell,” David whispered, my hearing just able to pick up how low his voice was.   
Yeah, yeah he is. I wanted to respond to David but knew that there was no chance of me ever being able to respond to him without raising suspicion about what we were doing. I moved away from David but that was not what I had ever wanted to do. He was going to be the one who has to tell most of the bad news to Noah. He would never actually do that to other people. He was the one who had ever wanted to cause chaos to others.   
“David?”  
“Yeah?”  
I paused, not wanting to ask what I was about to ask “We’re all going to spend our lives in jail, aren’t we?”  
David set down his papers with a sigh and attempted to look at me in the eyes, “Do you think we are?”  
“Yes,” I whispered and looked down at my own hands, not used to the fact that I was going to be the one to be vulnerable in front of my brothers.   
“Why have that kind of mentality?”  
“I don’t know, David. Maybe it’s because we’re not even halfway into the first day and the TV woman is already speculating about how much time we’ll be getting instead of if we’re innocent of not.”  
“And that bothers you because? We know this is a lost fucking cause anyway,” David sighed and turned back to the papers.   
“It seems as though David Abbot and Noah Hudson are in love,” The subtitles scrolled across the screen. David paid no mind to the TV either. “The two inmates at Cleveland Correctional Facility were seen passing notes between each other today during opening statements. Is there any chance that this might be a ploy to fain innocence and put James Abbot under the bus? More at seven.”  
More at seven? More at seven? What the fuck? I placed both of my hands on the excess papers in front of me and pushed them back into the stack that David. He grunted in response. The glass in front of us was covered in soot, the outline of a man right in the middle of the glass. The vibrations of Noah’s yelling shook soot off of the glass. Not enough that it made the glass clean by any measure but enough that it made it easier to see.   
We at in silence for as long as it took for Noah to calm down. Noah’s voice trembled. His eyes glowed a fiery red. The blue in his necklace fought back against the red in his eyes. Our lawyer walked out of the room. A few moments later he walked into our room.   
“Noah is way out of line,” Our lawyer rubbed his temples and looked up at the TV.   
“Do you really think arguing with the King of Hell was going to go over well?” David had barely looked up from his ‘light’ reading.   
“No, but you would think that he would be a lot more reasonable than this,” He gestured towards the glass where Noah sat fuming.   
“Nah,” I mused as I looked over my shoulder at the TV. “You see this shit?”  
Our lawyer took a look at the screen and watched the text scrolling on the screen for a moment, “They’re talking about the case, so what?”  
“They think David and Noah are in love!”  
“And? That could work in our favor.”  
“Could work in out favor?”  
“Yeah, we play up the love story and the jury won’t want to convict lovers to jail if they know that their circumstances lead them to this.”  
“Lead them to what? Eighty murders? Credit card fraud? That’s not going to work. There’s no precedent for this!”  
“What do you mean there’s no precedent for this?”  
“Out of all the cases I have followed, the lovers theory does not work unless you’re talking about one of them getting off and the other getting life in jail. That and there’s three of us so either way this is going to work out the exact same way that we had set up earlier.”  
David locked eyes with me for a moment. Our lawyer sat dumbfounded for a moment before taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. He let out a sigh. His eyes drifted back up to the TV before he shifted his body off of the table and turned back to the glass separating Noah and the rest of us. His blue necklace still glowed, attempting to calm him down though it looked like he was going to break the necklace off of him at any moment.   
“James,” Our lawyer sighed and lifted his hand up, gesturing to me vaguely. “You’re up first.”  
“Oh-,” I paused and looked up at him. I knew I was supposed to go first but that was not what I had expected after what happened today. “Right.”  
~  
“James Abbot,” Our lawyer looked at me. “What do you remember about the night you first started looking for Noah?”  
“A fight between David and I.”  
“What about?”  
“David hiding the fact that he was still in contact with Noah,” I whispered too low for anyone to actually hear me. “He was contacting Noah through college about what we had been up to and making sure that he was okay. I had forbidden it but David hadn’t been in contact with Noah for quite awhile.”  
Our lawyer locked eyes with me before he looked down at his notepad as if to recall his next question, “How long had it been since David had contacted Noah?”  
“He said that it had been about two years since he had contacted Noah.”  
Our lawyer turned back to the judge and gave him a weak smile, “Actually, your honor? I move to have Noah and David included in the testimony list.”  
“Your honor, it is known that Noah just entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.”  
The judge turned to Ms. Williams, “We must give them all the right to a fair and just trial and that includes their right to testify to help their case. They will be added to the testimony list provided that you get a psychologist to testify as well.”  
Noah’s necklace almost blinded me at this point. My head dipped and rolled back, my head hitting the table in front of me.


End file.
